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Do Ethics Solve Anything?

Do Ethics Solve Anything?

Postby The Exodus » April 7th, 2009, 8:43 pm

Hello all,

I'm pulling my hair out with the simple question of: What makes something right or wrong?

For a long time I've been somewhat of an "objectivist" - meaning only that I do not think morality is something with no *real* value outside ourselves. However, I do not prescribe to the notion that a certain list of rules is *always* right.

My main concerns I'll try to write plainly. I don't see how either a subjective stance of ethics *or* of an objective stance gets us any closer to the question of "what is right". The former cannot, by definition, give *reasons* why something is right, nor is it even able to justify that something *is, in fact* right, and as I'm sure most here would agree that pure subjectivism is self-defeating, I won't say anymore. But it seems the latter doesn't get us any closer either. It eventually results in question begging, because a) it doesn't give us any ability to actually *access* or *know* objective value, and b)it presents the Euthyphro dilemma all over again - is x wrong because God says so, or does God say so because it is wrong? Now, I know the common answer to this critique is to merely say that "x is wrong because God *is* so, therefore, since he says so, it is good", but this doesn't answer, in my mind, the primary question of how WE know what is good. If you do prescribe to a sort of hyped version of Divine Command Theory, this seems to pose problems of our *own* moral intuitions of what is good and bad, which, if we are Theists, we believe are somehow transcendentally given to us by God... for example, I think it would be unjust for God to eternally punish some people in a horrible fiery torment, no matter what the crime. What am I to think of myself - that I'm wrong? Or of God - that he is right? How am I to choose, since I must rely on some understanding of morality (which comes from where?) to make any decision at all?

Then we come to the rather uncomfortable dichotomy between Jesus and Yahweh, where Jesus tells us God is like a father, and the prophets depict God pretty much as a might-is-right tyrant. But if we believe Jesus to be the son of God, we must accept he accepted the Hebrew Bible. Yet, his depiction of God is much different.

Then there is another problem still for theists that if, as I do, we believe in judgment, we must ask ourselves how we are going to be judged. I'm inclined to be sort of Libertarian/Pluralistic in a sense, because I simply do not feel I have the authority to tell someone they are morally wrong - committing evil in fact - by acting on a belief, the same type of which I have. I do not like to think two opposites can be valid, but I simply cannot believe that we - as men - are in a position to judge such a transcendental law as morality, seeing as we cannot completely understand someone's intentions.

But again, pointing to this distinction does not tell *us* what is morally right or wrong. It only tells us that we cannot know for another. What makes something right or wrong? How will God look at our actions and judge them? I don't think he will look at the fact that I had a cheeseburger for lunch as wrong, but supposing I thought it was wrong to eat cheeseburgers, and I ate one ? Or suppose it was wrong to eat one, and I didn't know? Or suppose it was against wrong, and I knew, but I thought with a pure conscience convinced myself that this was a misnomer since it did not deal with anything I deemed important? The fact that I do this with a pure conscience makes it *just like* committing an action with no knowledge of the law, for, as far as I'm concerned, I have no knowledge of any personal law (I supposed you could say subjectively constructed system of ethics) I am breaking, for I have *completely changed my own moral law*.

And here we are introduced to the concept of pragmatic philosophy or pragmatic truth - the idea that basically, things are true to you based on their effect... e.g. I am ashamed of fornication because I have been taught it was wrong, whereas someone in another culture may feel it is a great moral success to have sex with many people. The effects (shame) are a result of a certain cause (teaching). This is not "objective" truth, but "practical" truth. Practical truth (read William James's The Will to Believe) is empirically verifiable. Example - *believe* that you are ugly, and you will walk around with your head down and feel ugly; *believe* that you are attractive, and you will become attractive/have confidence, etc. Another example: the fact that we've been taught to be afraid of rats, *creates* the reality of our fear if we see one running across the floor (your body even has certain reactions to this - perhaps you sweat, feel anxious, heart increases); yet suppose another society has taught their young that rats give long life; this will *create* the reality of, not fear, but desire! How very odd, that our beliefs can shape our reality.

I fear that this may be the case with morality, and thus, some element of Existentialism seems true, which, I am afraid, I find nearly inconsolable with (at least my current understanding of) Christianity, because if this Existential/Pragmatic hybrid is true it seems one can justify *anything to oneself in order to make things "right". Also, this means I have the ability to not only *break* my moral law, but *create* it as well.

Anyway, I seem to be running round and round with this topic, and it's extremely distressing. It seems like I'm one step away from losing my mind. Any thoughts?
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Re: Do Ethics Solve Anything?

Postby Bluegoat » April 7th, 2009, 10:49 pm

I only have a minute, but it seems to me that it is sometimes more helpful to think Truth and Not-Truth rather than good and evil or right and wrong. The ultimate Truth is identical with God, it is God, and it encompasses all lesser or partial truths. When we do something morally wrong or evil, it is always a kind of lie. When we steal, for example, we are saying something which does not belong to us does. We are violating the law of non-contradiction.

As for intentions vs objective truth. This is really the question of the relationship of objective to subjective reality, and a big question. Boethius writes on the topic better than most could. In essence what he says is the subjective is taken into the objective. What that means to us as ethical creatures is, I think, that often we are judged by God on our intentions, not the objective status of our acts.
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Re: Do Ethics Solve Anything?

Postby JRosemary » April 8th, 2009, 5:14 am

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Re: Do Ethics Solve Anything?

Postby friendofbill » April 8th, 2009, 2:20 pm

It seems to me that the "might is right" vision of Adonai is more native to the Mosaic era and the era of the kings than that of the Prophets. Some of it still surfaces in prophetic writings, notably Jeremiah, yet even there it is tempered with an evolving comprehension of God's nature as The One, usually described in Scripture as "Father." (I dislike the word "Father" relative to God, probably because I did not like my own father.)

I think, too, that much of the problem evident in reconciling Christian thought to First Covenant ("Old Testament") thinking lies in the fact that the message of Jesus of Nazareth, who was 100% Hebrew, was conveyed to the world by Paul and by gospel writers who relied heavily upon Paul, by way of whom the message was Hellenized. In the "New" Testament we are presented with the teachings of a Hebrew Sage filtered through the minds of thinkers trained in the ways of Greece, of Socratic/Aristotelian principles. True, Paul was a Jew, a Pharisee, but reading his letters one encounters time and again the evidence that he was trained in Greek thinking patterns and reasons with Greek logic. The transition could possibly be characterized this way: to the Hebrew mind, "God" is/was a verb (I AM); to the Greek mind, God is a propostion, a "thing" or a "what" that can be discussd, analyzed and about whom assertions can be made. The Jew would come before God and be silent; the Greek would come before God and discuss God.

Oversimplification, I know. It's simply one factor in the overall picture. Much very excellent work has been done in this particular respect by Bishop John Shelby Spong, in his books This Hebrew Lord and Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism.

Pax Domini
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Re: Do Ethics Solve Anything?

Postby JRosemary » April 8th, 2009, 2:50 pm

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Re: Do Ethics Solve Anything?

Postby Bluegoat » April 8th, 2009, 3:15 pm

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Re: Do Ethics Solve Anything?

Postby JRosemary » April 8th, 2009, 4:47 pm

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Re: Do Ethics Solve Anything?

Postby The Exodus » April 9th, 2009, 12:31 am

Corage, God Mend Al! - George MacDonald
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Re: Do Ethics Solve Anything?

Postby archenland_knight » April 9th, 2009, 9:37 pm

Romans 5:8 "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
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Re: Do Ethics Solve Anything?

Postby friendofbill » April 10th, 2009, 12:44 pm

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Re: Do Ethics Solve Anything?

Postby JRosemary » April 21st, 2009, 1:48 pm

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Re: Do Ethics Solve Anything?

Postby Lioba » April 21st, 2009, 8:03 pm

Iustitia est ad alterum.
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Re: Do Ethics Solve Anything?

Postby The Exodus » April 22nd, 2009, 1:41 am

Corage, God Mend Al! - George MacDonald
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Re: Do Ethics Solve Anything?

Postby JRosemary » April 22nd, 2009, 5:44 am

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Re: Do Ethics Solve Anything?

Postby friendofbill » April 22nd, 2009, 8:28 pm

Justa thought or two, JRosemary. I understand your contention that God "changed His mind" often in the biblical accounts of, for example, Judges, Kings, and Chronicles. That is presicely why I contended that the characterization of Him in the early wrirings was not fully developed, and reflected the current cultural and religious biases of the people. Later, the prophet Malachi would bring the message from, presumably, the same God: "I am the LORD; I change not." So one must either agree with the early accounts (God can change) or with Malachi, or try to have it both ways.

Now consider what we know today about the universe, both the macrocosm, including the vast universe filled with billions of galaxies each containing billions of stars and planets, and including the micrcosmic plane described by quantum mechanics, of quarks and antiquarks and things that exist but don't and can be observed but never seen. If you accept, as I do, that all of that is the work of God, suddenly we have a God entirely too big to perform in the manner of a provincial deity or behave in a manner predictable by human beings or perceptible to human logic.

In the Torah, and also in the New Testament, I see the attempts of men who have encountered God to describe that encounter in terms of their own cultural and philiosophical capabilities. I see no reason to be bound by laws that reflect a basically primitive culture. When Exodus 21:7 tells me I may sell my daugter into slavery, I do not take that as a suggestion. When my neightbor goes to work on Sunday (our version of Sabbatyh) I do not demand that he be killed, per Exodus 35:2. When my wife wears a pantsuit made from a cottion ployester blend, I do not condemn her for violating the law stated in Leviticus 19:19. Quite simply, our understanding of God has evolved since that time. That does not invalidate the Scriptures: it releases us from the debilitating enslavement to literalism that makes the Bible an object of worship, and frees us to bathe in the wonder of 4000 years of man meeting and reporting on God. How could they describe their experience except in terms of the three-tiered universe which they believed in? How could they describe and invite wiorship for a God Who would not be conceivable to them in the confines of the narrow universe in which they lived? The very fact that they could speak of Him at all reveals that they had encountered Him and seen Him at work and were doing their best to understand what they had seen and heard, but without the tools we have today, through science and through intellectual and philosophical growth, to enhance that understanding. And it presents us with a mystery: that the infinite Ground of All Being, I AM Himself, can and does take note of us on this little insignificant planet drifting in the outskirts of a hardly unusual galaxy.

I perceive a real danger in placing too much emphasis on the past and in placing too much emphasis on the future. The one approach mires us down in legalism and endless disputation, and the other emasculates us as we sit wringing our hands waiting for the parousia. There is no time in which we can act, or help, or love, or care, or serve, except the present moment. The present moment requires that we underrtand the place from which we came, certainly, and that we be aware where we are going: but we cannot live yesterday or tomorrow, we can only live to day. IF we rest our confidence in being children of Abraham, Jesus reminds us that God could raise up children of Abraham from the stones in the road. If we rest our confidence in a Lord coming tomorrow or next week, He reminds us that no man knows the day or time, and we have things to do right now.

I am not sure where the "Santa Claus" part of your response came from or to what it refers, so i will leave it alone.

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